sider reasoning animals. We found the whole region
inhabited by people who were entirely naked, both men and
women. They were well proportioned in body, with black,
coarse hair, and little or no beard. I labored much to
investigate their customs, remaining twenty-seven days for
that purpose, and the following is the information I
acquired. They have no laws and no religious beliefs, but
live according to the dictates of nature alone. They know
nothing of the immortality of the soul; they have no private
property, but everything in common; they have no boundaries
of kingdom or province; they obey no king or lord, for it is
wholly unnecessary, as they have no laws, and each one is
his own master. They dwell together in houses made like
bells, in the construction of which they use neither iron
nor any other metal. This is very remarkable, for I have
seen houses two hundred and twenty feet long and thirty feet
wide, built with much skill, and containing five or six
hundred people. They sleep in hammocks made of cotton,
suspended in the air, without any covering; they eat seated
upon the ground, and their food consists of roots and herbs,
fruits and fish. They eat also lobsters, crabs, oysters, and
many other kinds of mussels and shell-fish which are found
in the sea. As to their meat, it is principally human flesh.
It is true that they devour the flesh of four-footed animals
and birds; but they do not catch many, because they have no
dogs, and the woods are thick and so filled with wild beasts
that they do not care to go into them, except in large
bodies and armed. The men are in the habit of decorating
their lips and cheeks with bones and stones, which they
suspend from holes they bore in them. I have seen some of
them with three, seven, and even as many as nine holes,
filled with white or green alabaster--a most barbarous
custom, which they follow in order, as they say, to make
themselves appear ferocious.... They are a people of great
longevity, for we met with many who had descendants of the
fourth degree. Not knowing how to compute time, and counting
neither days, months, nor years--excepting in so far as they
count the lunar months--when they wanted to signify to us
any particular duration of time, they did it by showing us a